Diplomacy: Beef and Bitter Lemons

To sweeten sour ties, Nakasone pays a call and Shultz girds for Asia

Preoccupied of late with the problems of Europe and the Middle East, the Reagan Administration has taken little time to ponder the state of its relationships in Asia. Now with frictions increasing, the Administration is squarely facing its differences with the two principal powers of the East, Japan and China. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone paid a three-day visit to Washington last week, and late this week U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz leaves on a twelve-day trip to China, Japan and South Korea. Shultz's mission: to try to overcome some of the problems caused partly by diplomatic neglect but mostly by basic differences between the national interests of the U.S. and those of the giants of the Pacific.

In the case of Japan, the problems are both economic and military. The U.S., suffering from a deep recession, particularly in industries like automobiles and steel that have been pinched by Japanese imports, wants Japan to take significant steps in opening its borders to more American-made goods. That will help reduce the U.S.'s $17.5 billion unfavorable trade balance with Japan. The Administration also wants Tokyo to raise its defense spending, which currently accounts for less than 1% of the gross national product (vs. 6.3% in the U.S.). In the case of China, the differences concern trade, military and geopolitical matters and, notably, a feeling by Peking that the U.S. has not fulfilled some of its earlier promises to reduce its support for the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan.

Prime Minister Nakasone was a particularly welcome visitor to Washington. His willingness to make the trip scarcely eight weeks after he had assumed office was interpreted as a sign that the Japanese are anxious to preserve their 30-year friendship with the U.S. Two weeks ago, in preparation for the Prime Minister's tour, his government reduced nontariff barriers on a number of relatively unimportant U.S. imports. Nakasone also moved decisively to ease tensions over defense policy. He inserted a modest increase in defense spending into his otherwise austere national budget, and he ended a 15-year ban on Japan's sharing its military technology with the U.S.

Those moves set a favorable tone for the Nakasone visit. They also helped the Administration fend off criticism of Japanese policy emanating from Congress as well as from many business and labor leaders. Even as Nakasone was speeding along Pennsylvania Avenue on his way to the White House, President Reagan was receiving a delegation of U.S. industrialists and union officials, who asked him to take a firm stand with the Japanese Prime Minister. "The mood in the U.S. is to get tough with Japan," said Robert Delano, president of the American Farm Federation, whose members are upset about the protracted, and so far unsuccessful, U.S. efforts to reach a new and more favorable agreement on the sale of beef and lemons, oranges and other citrus products to Japan. "We have a discriminatory, unfair and unequal trade relationship," said United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser. The U.S. auto industry is desperately trying to persuade Japan to renew its agreement to limit car exports to the U.S. to 1.68 million units a year. The current agreement expires in March.